So, there's a lot of talk about the rise of "democratic socialists" in the democratic party. Some centrists are kind of missing the point, and saying the most deranged crap, going on about brown shirts and how radical these guys are and blah blah blah. Shut up, you sound like republicans. Really, this "leftist derangement syndrome" is insane and honestly, most of these guys are basically just socdems in practice, so you're tilting at windmills over nothing while looking completely ridiculous.
But some are kind of getting it, and I wanna discuss that. Look, the democratic party has been useless for 10 years now. In 2016, a lot of us wanted change. But then we were told we couldn't get change, and that we had to vote blue no matter who. Every election these guys would gloat and act like the most insufferable people on the planet, being such sore winners that it made us almost, kinda want MAGA to win. Because you guys suck that much. Seriously.
And now we're wondering why socialists are taking over the democratic party. You could only hold back the wave for so long, and after you lost in 2024, people got tired of your crap. So now people are electing leftists.
And I'm gonna be honest, I don't want "leftism." I'm not a socialist, I'm a social libertarian, which is basically adjacent to social liberalism or social democracy. I want policies like UBI, M4A (in theory, public option in practice), free college, student debt forgiveness, action on climate change, a housing program, and a shorter work week.
I've been told for years all of this isn't pragmatic and we gotta settle for incremental change while you act more useless than a cable guy from south park. Well, that caused some to radicalize into literal socialists, I didn't follow this trend since I already had an established ideology, but when change doesn't come from within, it's gonna come from outside. When we don't make the necessary changes to our society to make the system work, people are gonna be attracted to more radical candidates....sometimes too radical.
Now, I'm not convinced many of the people running this year are "too radical." Abdul El Sayed, not too radical. People scream ERMAHGERD HE CAMPAIGNED WITH HASAN, but then he just wants everyone to have universal healthcare and for the ethnic cleansing in palestine to end. Graham Platner has some reddit communist ideas, but he seems to have disavowed them, again, running as a socdem. DAC in NYC who everyone is losing their crap about, one of the three who won the other night, people are making a big deal about crap she said on twitter a while back, but again, running more or less as a socdem, on policy I like like M4A, UBI, a higher minimum wage, etc.
And that's the kind of stuff we need to discuss. I LIKE the fact that we're discussing this stuff. I like the fact that people who wanna take action on it are winning. Now, not all of them want the exact policies I want. I admit that. A standard socdem or DSA type is probably gonna abandon UBI and go all in with M4A and a GND instead. Standard practice for these guys. But when the options are "change" and "not change", well, I'm gonna vote for change.
And that's where I'm at.
Look, I dont want "socialism" either, and I do think that long term, the prospect of a left wing tea party could radicalize like the right wing one did, to the point we get leftists massively out of step with the american public and reality. It's one of the reasons I think centrists ignore these guys, give an inch and they'll take a mile. But at the same time, the democrats have been resisting the leftward shift that they NEED to take. They are the only ones who have answers, the right doesn't, the centrists don't either. And we do need some form of second "new deal" here. Maybe it wont be UBI. Maybe it will be a more standard fare of policies. But we need SOMETHING. And we are here because right now, the socialists are the only ones who seem willing to make the changes we need. I probably wont align myself with them long term, especially if they radicalize into full blown communists or some crap, but right now, their policies are refreshing. They're running on stuff like a higher minimum wage, medicare for all, a green new deal, etc. And yeah. If the centrist wing of the party doesn't have an answer for that other than their typical hugbox of uselessness, they're gonna lose.
With that said, this shift in the democratic party is a very good thing. if it shakes things up, and forces the party to reckon with what the future of the US should look like and what changes should be made, good. As I said, I'm a bit more moderate than the progressive wing in some ways, while being more progressive than the centrists. And quite frankly, whichever wing is closer to my goals is the wing I'm gonna go with in any given election.
So yeah. I'm gonna join the common emerging narrative that centrists need to wake tf up, realize that they can't win on "nothing", and that they need to actually propose some serious legislation to appease the public here. Btw, this is also why we've been losing to MAGA, because they come off as more change agents than democrats are. And they're basically running on trickle down economics. So yeah, either get off your butts and start doing stuff, or you're gonna let the socialists win, and from there, idk where we'll go because yeah, i do see the same risk of a tea party esque escalation trap like the right has been engaged with over the past 15 or so years.
As I always say, there are 3 forces in politics: progressives, conservatives, regressives. The left are progressives, the right are regressives. The real "conservatives" are the middle. Now, those "conservatives" will always exist. They'll serve as a moderating force on either the regressives, which represents the republican party, or the progressives, who represent this democratic tea party type wave. I'd rather we operate with a paradigm of progressives and conservatives, rather than conservatives and regressives. When the ideological spectrum is neoliberals and MAGA, it's conservatives vs regressives. When it's leftists vs centrists, it's progressives vs conservatives. Those moderate conservative types NEED to operate as a moderating force on the progressive force's worst impulses. But we still need the progressives trying to make society better, or else we risk stagnation and regression. it's all a balance. But when that balance is knocked out of whack, then what happens is you get radicals who keep getting more extreme, the more "polite society" resists making necessary changes. FDR doing the new deal wasn't just to make the american people better off, it was to head off support for both the fascists and the communists, who were at risk of taking over the country during the great depression. We need the democrats to actually do their job as the more progressive party, but not radically so, if we actually want the best results for society.
And yeah that's how I see it.
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